Global insurance company Aon downsizes its offices in Grand Rapids, Southfield

Global insurance company Aon downsizes its offices in Grand Rapids, Southfield
Aon Plc’s new Southfield office is at 3000 Town Center, Suite 2750, in the Southfield Town Center.

GRAND RAPIDS — A global insurance consultancy is following in the footsteps of many other businesses post-pandemic and “right-sizing” its office footprint to reflect the new hybrid reality of work.

Aon Plc moved from downtown Grand Rapids to an office about half the size in East Grand Rapids’ Gaslight Village last week. A week earlier, the company moved its other Michigan office from the entire 30th floor of the Southfield Town Center in Southfield to about two-thirds of the 27th floor.

Kathy Weaver, managing director and Michigan market leader for Aon, said the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic presented an opportunity for Aon to “reimagine” both of its Michigan offices. The teams in both locations looked at about a half-dozen sites before settling on their new suites.

“It was based on feedback from the colleagues and what was available in Class A real estate at the time,” she said.

The new 4,572-square-foot West Michigan office is at 2237 Wealthy St. SE, Suite 200, in East Grand Rapids. It can house about three-quarters of the West Michigan workforce, or 33 of 45 employees at a given time.

The new 7,859-square-foot Southfield office is at 3000 Town Center, Suite 2750. It has room for up to 75 people, Weaver said.

Aon has about 110 employees across Michigan. It has about 50,000 employees in 120 countries.

Both locations have dropped assigned work stations and private upper-management offices in favor of open seating and client meeting and team collaboration spaces. Weaver said this better reflects the new reality of flexible/hybrid work, and it works well for a client-centered firm.

“We have two things that we do: We serve clients or we serve our colleagues who are serving clients,” she said. “The pandemic for us (meant there was) a period when we were prohibited from going out and seeing clients. But even through not having offices, it was about getting out, seeing clients, meeting them where they wanted to be met, and a lot of times it was in their office, or without (our own) space we would just pick an alternate site.”

Weaver said that as Aon began devising a new real estate strategy, the office designs were informed by input from teams.

“(We asked), how do we ensure that their well-being is being served so that we are getting the best out of our colleagues, so we can serve our clients with flexibility and adaptability?” she said.

The new offices have their own designs influenced by “local elements,” like a client conference room in the East Grand Rapids branch being named after the city of Grand Rapids’ iconic “Blue Bridge,” Weaver said. The East Grand Rapids office also is outfitted with furniture from Haworth Inc. and Steelcase Inc. in a nod to Grand Rapids’ roots as Furniture City.

Both offices feature client-facing conference rooms and identical technology that can be accessed in every room, as well as unassigned seating and meeting rooms dedicated for internal use. Each office also has wellness rooms and gender-inclusive private bathrooms in addition to men’s and women’s restrooms.

Kevin O’Donnell, a senior account executive in Aon’s risk practice in Southfield, has worked in the insurance industry for nearly 30 years. He joined Aon in March 2019, just a year prior to the start of the pandemic.

When Aon’s Southfield lease came up for renewal in the early part of the pandemic, O’Donnell said he thought it made sense not to renew as most employees were still working remotely and the office was underutilized.

A build-out of the new space took longer to complete than expected due to supply chain issues, but he said it’s been a good change to work in person since it opened.

“I’ve been in every day and continue planning on doing that,” O’Donnell said.

O’Donnell said his outlook and mental health have been surprisingly positively impacted by not having an assigned desk, because he meets more people across other departments whom he wouldn’t ordinarily have met, and he’s able to “change up the scenery” from one day to the next.

He said while he feels office attendance shouldn’t be mandatory, having a physical office is a tool that helps build stronger teams by establishing trust and rapport and providing mentoring opportunities between colleagues of different generations.

“I ‘grew up’ in an office environment 30 years ago, where I learned kind of a hands-on experience, where I was in the office learning from my peers and learning from more senior people who were taking an interest in me,” O’Donnell said. “I think that if you tried to do that remotely, it can happen, but it’s going to happen more slowly.”

Weaver said Aon’s Michigan offices have added about 10 employees over the past year to accommodate client growth in its service areas of risk, health, wealth and human capital solutions.

“We did a fantastic job last year; we actually had double-digit growth and outpaced growth at many of the other offices across the U.S.,” she said.

She did not disclose revenue figures for the Michigan market but said the London-based company saw 6 percent organic growth globally, ending 2022 at $12.5 billion in total revenue.

Weaver said there are no set in-office days for employees. Rather, attendance is flexible on an individual level. But now that both office locations are open, she said Aon is looking forward to plugging back into the community once more by giving all employees volunteer opportunities on “community impact days” this June.

“The offices in Grand Rapids and Southfield, historically, they’ve been in the community for decades,” she said. “… We’re excited to be back in (our) space … to continue to contribute back to the community.”

Editor’s note: The original version of this report misstated Aon’s 2022 revenue. This version is correct.